Property agents in London have reported a record gap between asking prices for houses and actual sales prices. According to analysis by agents Douglas & Gordon, which compared the asking prices on the Rightmove website with those logged on the Land Registry, there is now an average £79,000 gap between the two figures. This compares [...]
Continue reading " The Gap Increases Between Asking Prices & Sale Prices "
Home owners and potential homebuyers have been peering into the tea leaves for months, trying to second-guess movements in interest rates. Will we have another six months of historically low rates, or a year, or two years? A new survey from The Worldwide Property Group has found that half of its respondents think rates will [...]
The number of pensioners with mortgages is rising relentlessly, according to new research from the Saga Group. There are already a quarter of a million people over 65 who are still repaying mortgages and that figure could rise to a million within five years. “A lot of pensioners are relying on endowment policies or lump [...]
The Economist has just published its annual Global House Prices survey, noting that average prices in Australia have jumped by 18 per cent in the year to September 2010, as a result of China’s thirst for minerals and an appreciating currency. It also argues that prices in Spain have been kept artificially high by government [...]
Since many borrowers are choosing to stick with their record low standard variable mortgage rates, to avoid paying a higher rate on a new deal, banks have decided to cut their rates still further. The average cost of a tracker loan dropped for the third consecutive month in October to hit a new record low [...]
The Residential Landlords Association is up in arms about the number of ‘unscrupulous tenants’ who squat in their properties – asking for changes to the law to speed up the eviction process, where there is a clear case of non-payment of rent or anti-social behaviour. Squatters and tenants on the other hand, argue that so [...]
1. Buy and renovate Go to auctions and look for wrecks and repossessions. You’ll have to find a 10 per cent deposit and the pay the rest within 28 days, so you must have a mortgage arranged and up to £10,000 in the bank. 2. Bank of Mum and Dad Around 80 per cent of [...]
New moves to improve energy efficiency in residential property have been announced by the Energy and Climate Change secretary Chris Huhne, particularly relating to home insulation as a means of reducing heating bills. But as the Residential Landlords Association points out, many homes in the UK “were not designed to be hermetically sealed with double [...]
Hopes of a quick return to house price rises, the feature of modern British life that is more important to Daily Mail readers than the safety of their own children, were dashed this week with the news that October saw the fourth consecutive fall in property values, by 0.9 per cent. Economists and property professionals [...]
The government’s newly announced cap on housing benefit is the culmination of at least two decades of gradually increasing subsidies for lower income people, allowing them to live in wealthy areas which – as a line of Tory MPs has reiterated – they couldn’t afford to live in otherwise. While this is quite true, let’s [...]
Continue reading " Housing Benefit Reforms = Social Cleansing? "
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